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Labyrinth (film)
Labyrinth (1986) is a 1986 British/American fantasy film, directed by Jim Henson, produced by George Lucas and starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly. The screenplay was colloboratively produced between Henson, George Lucas, children's author Dennis Lee, Terry Jones and Elaine May, although Jones received the film's sole screen-writing credit. Labyrinth was shot on location in New York and at Elstree Studios and Hampstead Heath in the UK. It was the last feature film directed by Henson before his death in 1990. Plot A young girl, Sarah, solemnly acts out a play in a park with only her dog Merlin with her as company. When the town clock strikes seven o' clock, Sarah remembers that she has to babysit her infant brother Toby and runs back home. As Sarah acts out the play in the park, she is being watched by a white barn-owl. Upon returning home Sarah is told off by her step-mother Irene for being late, as she and Sarah's father Robert were due to go out for the evening. This provokes Sarah into a rage, and she storms upstairs to her room. Her parents ensure that Toby is safe in his cot, and leave while Sarah is still sulking in her room. Upon discovering that her toy bear Lancelot is missing from her room, Sarah storms into her brother's room and finds the bear with him. Sarah flies into a rage and initially she wishes that someone would take her away from "this awful place," lifting a distressed Toby out of his cot and telling him a story that mirrors her own situation. She calms down, but as she leaves the room Toby continues to cry and she says "I wish the Goblins would come and take you away. Right now." Sarah turns the light of the room off, but the next moment Toby goes silent. When she tries to turn the light on again, the switch fails to work. Upon re-entering the room, Sarah finds that Toby has vanished. After Toby's disappearance a white barn owl flies into the room, and transforms into Jareth, the Goblin King. Jareth tells Sarah that he has taken the baby as she asked, and offers her a crystal that will reveal her dreams if she forgets about her brother. Sarah declines, and Jareth tells her that she has thirteen hours to rescue her brother from his Labyrinth and that he will turn the baby into "one of us forever" if she fails to reach him in time. Sarah sets off on her quest and quickly encounters Hoggle, a dwarf who works as a gardener in Jareth's Labyrinth. When Sarah first meets Hoggle he asks her for her name, and his response suggests that he was anticipating her arrival. Sarah asks Hoggle to show her the entrance to Jareth's Labyrinth and is led to the front gates, which open as she approaches them. Hoggle leaves Sarah, and she enters the Labyrinth alone. After running through a seemingly endless corridor, Sarah stops and slumps down against one of the walls in defeat. As she rests, she is addressed by a worm who lives in a crack in the wall. The Worm tells Sarah that things in the Labyrinth are not always what they seem, and suggests that she try walking through the wall adjacent to them as it contains an opening. Despite initally being sceptical, Sarah carefully approaches the wall and finds that there is indeed an opening. Sarah enters a new maze-like area of the Labyrinth and tries to mark the route she is taking with lipstick, only to find there are small creatures over-turning the stones she is marking, making her system useless. Meanwhile, Jareth is seen with Toby in his castle, celebrating his arrival. Jareth sings the song Magic Dance, and gleefully plays with Toby in the midst of his goblin subjects. Sarah eventually encounters The Four Guards and is challenged to a logic puzzle, which after some thought she solves. She takes the correct door, but fails to look where she is going and falls down a tunnel lined with hundreds of animated, scaled hands that catch her mid-fall. The hands ask Sarah if she wants to go up or down, and Sarah chooses down only to be dropped into an Oubliette, a dungeon that can only be accessed through a hatch in the ceiling. Hoggle is sent by Jareth to release Sarah from the Oubliette, and by tempting him with the offer of a plastic bracelet she has with her Sarah is able to persuade him to take her back into the Labyrinth. Hoggle leads Sarah pass a series of huge False Alarms as they journey towards the exit, but they are soon stopped by Jareth who demands to know why Hoggle is helping Sarah. Sarah irritates Jareth by describing his Labyrinth as "a piece of cake," provoking him to send The Cleaners after her and Hoggle which sends them running for their lives. Faced with a dead end, they manage to push down a wall and escape moments before the machine collides with them. Sarah and Hoggle climb up a ladder and emerge in a courtyard which is home to The Wiseman, who offers Sarah a few words of rambling advice in exchange for her ring. Hoggle attempts to leave Sarah at this point, but she snatches the collections of plastic jewelry he has attached to his belt and refuses to return it to him unless he agrees to lead her through the Labyrinth. Reluctantly, Hoggle agrees to accompany Sarah. They both continue through a hedge garden, and as they are walking Sarah tells Hoggle he is the only friend she has in the Labyrinth. Hoggle seems startled by this, and tells Sarah he has never had a friend before. Just after this exchange, they are stopped by a pained roar that makes Hoggle flee in fear despite Sarah's attempts to stop him. Sarah goes forward to investigate the noise, and finds Ludo, a huge, shaggy-haired monster, being tormented by a group of mounted guards wielding horrific, biting monster on sticks. Sarah makes the guards leave by throwing rocks at them, and releases Ludo from his bounds. Finding that he is kind and gentle, Sarah allows him to join her on her journey. Together, Sarah and Ludo find two doors with talking door knockers attached to them. Sarah and Ludo pass through one of the doors into a dank, dimly lit forest. Soon after they enter, Ludo vanishes and Sarah is left to go through the forest alone. Meanwhile Hoggle runs into Jareth, who orders him to give a peach to Sarah. When Hoggle asks if the peach will harm Sarah, Jareth taunts him and ridicules the idea that Sarah could consider "a repulsive little scab" such as him a friend. In parting, he tells Hoggle he will make him a prince if Sarah should ever kiss him, derisively adding that Hoggle would be made nothing less than the "Prince Of The Land Of Stench" just prior to leaving. Sarah soon encounters the fireys, a gang of wild, fun loving creatures with detachable body parts who attempt to remove Sarah's head. Sarah runs away from them, and comes to a rocky cliff face. She is saved by Hoggle who is at the top of the cliff and lowers a rope for her to climb. In her gratitude, Sarah kisses Hoggle and they both instantly drop through a trap-door. They come out on a ledge above The Bog of Eternal Stench, and manage to avoid falling in by edging their way across to safety. They meet Ludo as they are finding their way across the Bog, but are stopped from escaping it by Sir Didymus, a small, fox-terrier like Knight whose duty it is to defend the bridge. Sarah asks Sir Didymus for his permission to cross the bridge, and they are allowed to go across. The bridge breaks as Sarah is crossing it, but she clings to a branch hanging overhead and is saved from falling into the Bog by Ludo, who makes rocks rise up in the bog that Sarah uses as stepping stones to get across. Together, Sarah, Hoggle, Ludo and Sir Didymus (on his sheep-dog mount, Ambrosius) move forward, entering an enchanted forest. Worn out by exhaustion and hunger Sarah is delighted when Hoggle offers her a peach Jareth ordered him to give to her. Sarah takes a bite, but the peach is poisioned and she falls unconscious as Hoggle, wracked by guilt at his betrayal, runs away. Sarah enters a dream-world where she dances with Jareth at a magnificent ball. As they dance, Sarah notices a clock in the corner of the room that indicates the thirteenth hour is drawing near. Remembering her brother, Sarah breaks away from the dance and flees, shattering the dream-world by smashing the edge of it with a chair. She falls, landing in a vast Junkyard where she is met by The Junk Lady, a withered old woman with a mound of possessions piled on her back. The Junk Lady takes Sarah to an exact copy of her room at home, and while Sarah is initially convinced she has returned home she eventually remembers she has to save Toby, and escapes from the room as it collapses around her. Sarah finds Ludo and Sir Didymus, and together they approach the Goblin City. They are nearly blocked from entering the city by the giant robot Humongous, but Hoggle leaps onto Humongous from above and stops it before it can attack them. Once Humongous is stopped, Hoggle leaps down from it onto the ground and is reunited with Sarah, who tells Hoggle that she forgives him for giving her the peach. With all of her friends alongside her, Sarah enters the Goblin City. They are quickly attacked by the Goblin Army, but Sarah and her friends manage to dodge all attempts to stop them and reach Jareth's Castle together. When they reach the Throne Room of the castle, Sarah realizes that Jareth must have hidden Toby elsewhere. Sarah tells her friends that she has to go forward alone, and leaves them to move deeper into the Castle. Sarah finds herself in the Escher Room, a vast, disorientating room filled with gravity defying stairways. Jareth is in the room with her and Toby, but Sarah mostly ignores him and focuses entirely on finding her brother. Sarah finally reaches a high ledge, and finds that Toby is sitting above a pit a long way below her. Closing her eyes, Sarah leaps from the edge to reach him. Sarah descends slowly and lands on a platform that is suspended on mid-air, pieces of rubble floating around her. Jareth approaches her from a shadowed alcove, and desperately attempts to distract her, telling her that he did everything she asked of him and saying he will give her everything she wants in exchange for her love, fear and obidience. Sarah ignores him, and recites the speech from The Labyrinth she could not quite remember at the beginning of the film. Jareth holds out a crystal for her to take, but Sarah disregards it and tells Jareth "You have no power over me." Jareth crumbles before Sarah's eyes, the crystal he had held out to her shattering as he transforms into an owl. Sarah finds herself transported back to the entrance hall of her house, just as a white barn owl flies from the window. Sarah runs back upstairs to check on Toby, and finds him sound asleep in his cot. Returning to her room, Sarah starts to pack away some of her childish possessions, when her friends speak to her from the mirror of her vanity. They tell her she can call upon them if she ever needs them, and Sarah tells them that she will always need them. With that, her friends suddenly appear in her room along with other creatures from the Labyrinth, and they all celebrate Sarah's victory. Jareth is seen in his owl-form perched on a branch outside Sarah's window, peering inside. The owl flies off as Sarah continues to have fun with her friends, heading towards the moon. Cast 'Human Cast' *'David Bowie' as Jareth, the Goblin King, the main antagonist of the film. Juggler Michael Moschen performed in the film as Jareth's hands and carried out the elaborate crystal-ball juggling manipulations. *'Jennifer Connelly' as Sarah, the film's main character. *'Toby Froud' as Toby Williams. *'Shelley Thompson' as Irene Williams. *'Christopher Malcolm' as Robert Williams. *'Natalie Finland' as the Fairy. 'Creature Performers' *'Shari Weiser' as Hoggle and Brian Henson as the voice of Hoggle. *'Ron Mueck' and Rob Mills as Ludo and Ron Mueck as the voice of Ludo. *'Dave Goelz' and David Barclay as Sir Didymus, with David Shaughnessy as the voice of Sir Didymus. *'Steve Whitmire' and Kevin Clash as Ambrosius, with Percy Edwards as the voice of Ambrosius. *'as The Worm and '''Timothy Bateson' as the voice of The Worm.' *'Frank Oz''' as The Wiseman and Michael Hordern as the voice of The Wiseman. *'Dave Goelz' as The Wiseman's Bird Hat and David Shaughnessy as the voice of The Wiseman's Bird Hat. *'Karen Prell' as The Junk Lady and Denise Bryer as the voice of The Junk Lady. Soundtrack The soundtrack to the film features both selections from the score by Trevor Jones and original songs by David Bowie. The film's signature song, Underground, was released as the lead single from the soundtrack and reached 21 on the U.K singles chart. Magic Dance was the other single from the soundtrack, and was released as a 12" single in the U.S, Italian and Spanish markets. Production 'Early Development' According to the film's conceptual designer Brian Froud, Labyrinth was first discussed between himself and director Jim Henson during a limousine ride on the way back from a special screening of their 1982 fantasy film The Dark Crystal. Both agreed to work on another project together, and Froud suggested that the film should feature goblins. On the same journey, Froud "pictured a baby surrounded by goblins" and this strong visual image - along with Froud's insight that goblins traditionally steal baby's - provided the basis for the film's plot.Froud, Brian & Jones, Terry. The Goblins of Labyrinth. Abrams. 2006/ According to Henson, Froud also made the suggestion that the film should feature a Labyrinth.Pirani, Adam. Starlog Magazine. "Part Two: Into the Labyrinth with Jim Henson." August 1986/ Froud produced a range of concept paintings and sketches that informed the overall look and feel of the finished film. Several of these feature a young girl journeying through the Labyrinth with Hoggle and other assorted goblins, and this girl appears to be an early version of Sarah. Discussing the film’s origins, Henson explained that he and Froud “Wanted to do a lighter weight picture, with more of a sense of comedy since Dark Crystal got kind of heavy - heavier than we had intended. Now I wanted to do a film with the characters having more personality, and interacting more.” Labyrinth was being seriously discussed as early as March 1983, when Henson held a meeting with Froud and children's author Dennis Lee.http://www.henson.com/jimsredbook/2011/03/28/3281983/'' Lee was tasked with writing a 90-page novella that would become the basis for Terry Jones’ script of the film, turning it in at the end of 1983. http://www.henson.com/jimsredbook/2010/12/27/12-1983/ One of several early ideas being discussed in the early stages of the film's development was that the lead would be a King whose baby had been stolen and placed under an enchantment. Alan Lee - Froud’s collaborator on the illustrated book Faeries – observed that this plot seemed similar to that of Ridley Scott’s Legend, and Henson and his creative team went back to the drawing board. Ultimately the decision was taken for the film’s lead character to be a young girl, as according to Henson “That hadn't been done very much.” The protagonist went through several different incarnations before it was decided that she should be a teenage girl from contemporary America. Henson noted that he wished to “make the idea of taking responsibility for one's life - which is one of the neat realizations a teenager experiences - a central thought of the film." With this in mind, 14 year old actress Jennifer Connelly was cast in the role. According to Henson, Connelly "could act that kind of dawn-twilight time between childhood and womanhood." Labyrinth Production Notes The character of Jareth also underwent some significant developments during the early stages of pre-production. According to Henson he was originally meant to be another creature in the same vein as his subjects. Henson eventually decided he wanted a big, charismatic star to the play the Goblin King, and developed the role with David Bowie in mind. Henson met David Bowie in the summer of 1983 to seek his involvement, as Bowie was in the U.S for his Serious Moonlight tour at the time.Pegg, Nicholas. The Complete David Bowie. Reynolds and Hearn. 2002. Page 469. Henson continued to pursue Bowie for the role of Jareth, and sent him each revised draft of the script of the film. At one point Bowie lost interest in the project because he felt that a particular re-draft of the script lacked humor.Johnson, Kim "Howard." Life Before and After Monty Python. Plexus. 1993. Page 210./ Bowie only formally agreed to take part a few weeks prior to the start of filming. While Terry Jones is credited with writing the screenplay the shooting script was actually a collaborative effort that featured contributions from Henson, George Lucas, Laura Phillips, Dennis Lee and Elaine May. Jones himself has said that the finished film is very different from his version of the script. According to Jones, “I didn’t feel that it was very much mine. I always felt it fell between two stories, Jim wanted it to be one thing and I wanted it to be about something else.” According to Jones, his version of the script was “about the world, and about people who are more interested in manipulating the world than actually baring themselves at all.” Jones script had Sarah realize there is no true solution to the Labyrinth, and featured a Jareth who used the Labyrinth to “keep people from getting to his heart.” Jones has said that Bowie’s involvement in the project had a significant impact on the direction taken with the film. Jones had originally intended for the audience not to see the centre of the Labyrinth prior to Sarah’s reaching it, as he felt that doing so robbed the film of a significant ‘hook.’ With the thought of Bowie starring in the film in mind, Henson decided he wanted Jareth to sing and appear throughout the film, something Jones considered to be a ‘wrong’ decision. An early version of the script attributed to Jones and Phillips varies in several notable ways from the shooting script. The early script has Jareth enter Sarah's house in the guise of Robin Zakar, the author of a play she is due to perform in. Sarah does not wish for her brother to be taken, and Jareth does not set an ultimatum until Sarah has already made some head-way through the Labyrinth. The early script ends with Jareth transforming into a powerless, snivelling Goblin, an outcome that was ultimately abandoned in favour of that found in the finished film.http://www.astrolog.org/labyrnth/script.txt Labyrinth Early Script After much tweaking and re-writing, the script was ready for filming. The Jim Henson Creature Shop in London had been producing puppets and costumes for the film since 1984, and filming finally started in April 1985 at Elstree Studios.http://www.henson.com/jimsredbook/2011/05/05/551985/ 'Filming' 'Post Production' Reception 'Box Office' 'Critical Reception' References